Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Layperson Study 1

Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions. Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality).

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Cardiac Transplant Disorder
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Total Survival; Other: Stratified Transplant Survival

Detailed Description

Publicly available outcome assessments for transplant programs do not make salient that some programs tend to reject many of the hearts they are offered, whereas other programs accept a broader range of donor offers. The investigators use empirical studies to test whether transplant center performance data (i.e. transplant and waitlist outcome statistics) that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence laypersons to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 1000 lay participants will be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomized to one of five different information presentation conditions:

1. Condition 1 ("baseline" condition): view only combined transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center)
2. Condition 2: view combined transplant survival + total survival (e.g. overall survival rate at each center, computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients)
3. Condition 3: view only stratified transplant survival (e.g. transplant survival rate stratified into patients who received excellent donor organs and patients who received less than optimal donor organs)
4. Condition 4: view stratified transplant survival + total survival
5. Condition 5: view only total survival

Participants will be given an introduction to the donor organ match process, then asked to view the table of transplant outcomes corresponding to the condition they were randomized to. Each participant is asked to choose between two hospitals: one hospital with an non-selective, "accepting" strategy (takes all donor heart offers), and one hospital with a more selective, "cherrypicking" strategy (tends to reject donor offers that are less than "excellent" quality). In order to identify the decision process that underlies this choice pattern, the investigators will examine a putative mediator. Specifically, participants will be asked to rate the extent to which they considered patients' chances of getting an excellent heart, avoiding a less-than-optimal heart, and getting any type of heart when making their choice between the two hospitals.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 1019
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Pennsylvania
    • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, 15213
      • Carnegie Mellon University

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

Participants who are already qualified mTurk workers with Worker Accounts meeting the above criteria will be asked to participate if they confirm the following inclusion criteria in the consent form.

1. 18 years of age or older
2. must read and understand the information in the consent form
3. must want to participate in the research and continue with the survey
4. must live in United States

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Participants on mTurk will not be allowed to participate if they fail to pass the initial "bot screening", a multiple-choice question that asks, "What phone number should you dial when there is an emergency?" The obvious correct response in this screening question is "911", so participants who select one of the incorrect responses (i.e. "1-800-ANTIBOT", "1-877-MTURKER", "123") are filtered out and not allowed to complete the survey.
2. Participants on mTurk will be allowed to participate, but excluded from data analysis, if they submit a nonsense response to the free-response question which reads, "In your own words, why do you think patients should choose the hospital you picked?" This question takes place after the participant has viewed the choice stimuli and selected their response. If participants input nonsense in the text response box, they will be permitted to complete the survey and paid, but filtered out from the data analysis.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Factorial Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

5

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Condition 1: Combined only; Participants randomized to baseline (control) arm Condition 1 will view only combined transplant survival outcome information (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) when making a choice between the two hospitals.
Experimental: Condition 2: Combined plus Total; Participants randomized to Condition 2 will view combined transplant survival and total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals.	Other: Total Survival; The overall or "total" survival rate at each center is displayed in the table of outcome statistics. Total survival is computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients: [(number of patients surviving after transplant at end of year + number of patients alive on waitlist at end of year)] / [number of patients alive on waitlist at start of year].
Experimental: Condition 3: Stratified only; Participants randomized to Condition 3 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals.	Other: Stratified Transplant Survival; The transplant survival rate in the table of outcome statistics is stratified into two groups: (i) patients who received excellent donor organs and (ii) patients who received less than optimal donor organs. Stratified transplant survival is computed from survival rates of transplant patients who received each quality category of organ. excellent transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with excellent organ]/[number of patients for whom excellent organ was accepted for transplant] marginal transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ]/[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant]
Experimental: Condition 4: Stratified plus Total; Participants randomized to Condition 4 will view stratified transplant survival and total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals.	Other: Total Survival; The overall or "total" survival rate at each center is displayed in the table of outcome statistics. Total survival is computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients: [(number of patients surviving after transplant at end of year + number of patients alive on waitlist at end of year)] / [number of patients alive on waitlist at start of year].; Other: Stratified Transplant Survival; The transplant survival rate in the table of outcome statistics is stratified into two groups: (i) patients who received excellent donor organs and (ii) patients who received less than optimal donor organs. Stratified transplant survival is computed from survival rates of transplant patients who received each quality category of organ. excellent transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with excellent organ]/[number of patients for whom excellent organ was accepted for transplant] marginal transplant survival = [number of patients surviving after transplant with marginal organ]/[number of patients for whom marginal organ was accepted for transplant]
Experimental: Condition 5: Total only; Participants randomized to Condition 5 will view only total survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals.	Other: Total Survival; The overall or "total" survival rate at each center is displayed in the table of outcome statistics. Total survival is computed from survival rates of both transplant and waitlist patients: [(number of patients surviving after transplant at end of year + number of patients alive on waitlist at end of year)] / [number of patients alive on waitlist at start of year].

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Hospital Choice	The outcome variable will be a measure of binary choice between two hospitals: one with a selective donor-heart acceptance strategy and one with a non-selective donor heart acceptance strategy. Participants will respond to the question "Which Hospital is a better choice for patients? Please click on one of the two tables below to indicate which hospital is the better choice." Participants will choose been two outcome tables featuring the selective and non-selective hospital (counterbalanced, such that each of the two choices is equally likely to be presented at top of the choice scenario in each condition). The number of participants that choose each hospital will be the measured outcome variable used in analyses.	1 day

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Mediator of Hospital Choice	Participants responded to the question, "There are many reasons why one transplant hospital might outperform another. Which reasons were most important in your decision? Please move the slider to indicate how much you considered each of the reasons below (0=reason was not important, 100=reason was extremely important). Patients were more likely to receive any type of donor heart at the hospital I picked.	1 day

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Carnegie Mellon University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Alison E Butler, BS, Carnegie Mellon University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): November 15, 2019
• Primary Completion (Actual): April 30, 2020
• Study Completion (Actual): April 30, 2020

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 18, 2019
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 18, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): October 21, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): April 23, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 3, 2026
• Last Verified: April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Heart Transplant; Transplant Survival; Applied Ethics; Human Behavior; Decision Psychology
• Other Study ID Numbers: 1 F30 HL152526-01-A; 20PRE35120492 (Other Grant/Funding Number: American Heart Association); 1F30HL152526-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES

IPD Plan Description

The PI will make all of the raw IPD files - together with statistical analysis protocol descriptions and information for proper analysis available for download a minimum of 1 year, and a maximum of 3 years, after publication of the corresponding manuscripts. All human subjects data are anonymized immediately when they are initially written from the online survey platform to the server, and thus participant confidentiality will not be compromised by this plan for data sharing.

All hypotheses, methods, and planned analyses for the applicant's studies will be pre-registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and Open Science Framework.

• IPD Sharing Time Frame: All of the raw files, statistical analysis protocol descriptions, and information for proper analysis will be available for download a minimum of 1 year, and a maximum of 3 years, after publication of the corresponding manuscripts.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL; SAP; ICF; ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No